


Faith Still Needs a Gun

by redsquadronblues (clockworkcorvids)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone Hates Snoke, Gen, Kylux if you squint, M/M, Mild Gore, Missing Scene, Moral Ambiguity, Post-Battle of Starkiller Base, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fill, Unhealthy Relationships, and i don't think about it, i just get ideas and write them, idk what's happening anymore, im still mad they never released that deleted scene, just a lot of ambiguity in general, no beta we die like men, not warranting an archive warning but there is some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/redsquadronblues
Summary: Hux is beginning to hope—much as he despises that word, knows how bitter it is on his tongue and knows that the reason is because of the way the Resistance has twisted it—that he’s close to being over with this, that there may be a way out of this grave he’s jumped into after all, when the ground shakes again. Harder than before, closer than before.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	Faith Still Needs a Gun

**Author's Note:**

> me? pretending tros never happened by writing about tfa stuff i had four years to write about but somehow _didn't_ during all that time? it's more likely than you'd think
> 
> title from crossfire by stephen, and i'm still using [this ](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/944091) prompt list but i'm still too lazy to organize the whole thing

The ground is shaking, trembling beneath Hux’s feet, white snow mixed with black ash to create some sort of odd, sludgy grey stuff that whips around him in the wind, squishes beneath his feet, makes him flare his nostrils and squint violently. 

Normally, he’d have a mask—or better yet, a respirator; he cares too much about his dignity and that facade of collectedness he’s always keeping up—but there was no time to get a mask.

There was no time to get backup, either. 

Not that he would have brought backup, if he had been able to acquire troops from the midst of the battlefield, or from the halls of Starkiller base, everything lit red by blood and alarm lights and explosions and, above it all, a dying sun. 

He doesn’t trust anyone enough to do what he’s about to do, except maybe Phasma, and even then only if he could plead a head injury afterwards, claiming he couldn’t think straight through the effects of such a wound. 

Hux shoulders the sniper rifle he’s been carrying with him, the only thing he had time to grab before he took flight from the command center, not his own but rather stolen from some dead officer. Perhaps that’s for the better, though—he doesn’t think this rifle is going to make it out of here (then again, he might not either).

Hux stares straight into the snow, into the ash, one gloved hand up to shield his face from the wind. He’s simultaneously glad for and annoyed by his greatcoat; it’s heavy, holding him back, and if he weren’t so familiar with it he’d be worried it might slip off his shoulders with a wrong move, but it provides a level of protection from the elements that his uniform alone never could. 

Unfortunately, his greatcoat does nothing for his exposed, numb ears, tips no doubt burning red from the cold, so he is forced to breathe hard and slow, focusing on anything but the noise, blocking out the screaming engines of TIE fighters and X-Wings, blocking out the screaming of the wind, blocking out the voice screaming at him in his head to  _ turn back, now, nine hells, this isn’t worth it! _

He _ isn’t worth it. _

But Hux is here anyways, moving as swiftly as he can throughout the spindly ghosts of dark trees, some still hanging onto life and others— _ many _ others, more and more as he keeps walking—scarred by fire or the telltale marks of a lightsaber. 

He’s getting close, and he no longer needs the information from the tracker in Ren’s comm to tell this. Ren had opposed the comm, saying something about not wanting to be tracked by the other Knights of Ren, and Snoke had retorted something along the lines of  _ If they want to find you, they don’t need a tracker signal to do so. The rest of the First Order does. _

Hux, for his part, had been standing there in silence, hands folded neatly behind his back, but he hadn’t missed the jab at his abilities as someone who wasn’t Force-sensitive. He is used to having to claw his way to the top, anyways, to have to fight those who have advantages both fair and unfair, and he tells himself that he only needs the tracker because without it, in this icy hell, there would be no way anyone below a Force user—and hells, probably not most Force users anyways, if they’re all anything like Ren—could find Ren.

Then again, now that he’s made it this far the lightsaber scars on the trees are all he needs to know Ren is nearby.

Hux is beginning to hope—much as he despises that word, knows how bitter it is on his tongue and knows that the reason is because of the way the Resistance has twisted it—that he’s close to being over with this, that there may be a way out of this grave he’s jumped into after all, when the ground shakes again. Harder than before, closer than before.

Multiple things happen at the same time.

One: he spots Kylo Ren, an unmistakable heap of blacks and greys thrown asunder in the snow, and he spots blood, a nauseating amount of it. It’s dark, almost black, and if not for the way it contrasts the color of the snow while simultaneously melting through the stuff, he almost wouldn’t be able to recognize it.

Two: he spots the chasm. Gaping, a crack in the earth, a maw opening, pulling everything down into the deep dark nowhere, to the core of the planet—the one place the First Order  _ hadn’t _ managed to fully get in their grip with Starkiller Base. Ren is lying close to it, so close, in a way that makes Hux’s throat close up, makes the path before him split in two more clearly than even the ground that has been broken by the great abyss before him. 

He sees what he can do, and it stops him in his tracks. 

So easily, he could recover Ren, he could call in the shuttle that’s waiting for him just at the edge of the woods or, if the automated connection shorts out, surely drag Ren back. It would be slow, dangerous going, but they would likely both survive. 

Or he could just leave. Turn back. Say he never found Ren, say it was too late. 

This prospect tempts him. 

But he knows Snoke would see through it in an instant, and maybe he would be able to say that he ranked decidedly above Kylo Ren, but if only for a fleeting moment followed by the tongue-biting, copper-tasting, blackout shot of death, is it really worth it?

Even if he shoots Ren, point blank, far too close for a sniper rifle but he could make it work anyways. Even if he pushes Ren over the edge of the abyss. Even if he puts the sole of one snow-slicked, somehow still clean boot against Ren’s throat and presses down. Even if he takes up the lightsaber lying inches from one outstretched hand, that volatile beast of a weapon.

The third thing that happens in this moment is that the screaming of ship engines—and Hux might just actually have a head injury, because for once he can’t distinguish the type, whether they’re Resistance or First Order—comes closer, and a series of blasts snake through the trees, almost vertical. Red laser bolts burn through snow, through wood, through everything in their path, clipping what they don’t vaporize, right at home with the lightsaber and burn scars on what trees are left. 

The first round, miraculously, misses both Hux and Ren, but Hux knows neither of them will be so lucky next time, and it is far too late for him to leave Ren behind. Not now. 

It comes to him, the realization that even if he genuinely tries to rescue Ren, to drag him back to the ship, if Ren is hit by a laser bolt that Hux cannot stop, that Hux does anything less than throw himself in front of, Snoke will never forgive him.

Hux makes up his mind in this moment, and then he’s kneeling in the snow, draping his greatcoat around Ren’s shoulders, grimacing at the red he sees peeking through tears in Ren’s robes—some of it blood, some of it skin on the way to frostbite—and sure enough, he’s dropping the rifle, slinging it off his shoulder and hurling it into the abyss, and he takes less than a second to watch it fall.

That could have been him.

That could have been Ren. 

What a way to die, consumed by fire and ice, by chaos and disorder.

Ren is unconscious, but Hux realizes that there was a point at which he stopped paying attention to the tracker, and  _ behold! _ it isn’t working now. He may not be Force-sensitive, but perhaps it’s something about Ren, something about the two of them. 

Hux won’t dwell on it, not here or now and hopefully not ever, but at the same time he is cognizant of the energy radiating off of Ren, stronger if he closes his eyes and concentrates, that feeling of Ren just  _ being _ , existing, trackable from the other end of the galaxy. It’s difficult for Hux to put into words, well-spoken as he is, and that itself tells him more of what he needs to know about it than any words themselves ever could.

Ren’s body is strangely hot, radiating something beyond warmth, a burning, searing heat despite his shallow breathing and the chill of everything around him. This is a stark contrast to Hux, whose hands are numb and no doubt externally cold even through his gloves, and it sends an involuntary shudder up his spine as his hands close around Ren’s shoulders, one from behind and one in front, holding the man tightly from the side as the two of them now, but mostly Hux, stumble back through the burning, freezing, crumbling woods.

Hux could strangle Ren so easily right now, and part of him wants to as he watches the horrible amounts of blood coming out of a diagonal gash across the man’s face, watches the half-frozen, coagulated stuff leak down Ren’s chin and soak into the fabric of Hux’s greatcoat.

But something stops him.

Maybe the fear—no,  _ knowledge _ —of what the aftermath of that would be, maybe the newfound realization that Hux was in tune with the very signature of Ren’s existence, be that the Force or simply a hallucination induced by whatever injuries he was no doubt collecting right now. Whatever it is, it stops this train of thought more effectively than a lightsaber straight through his carotid artery, and it gives him the strength he needs to keep walking.

Ren drags limply beside him, not unlike a corpse. Perhaps he is a corpse, in his own way, lost to the strange machinations of the Sith. Perhaps Hux is a corpse in this way, too, little more than a pilot.

Lasers fire around them again, sending up ash and snow and stars know what else, coming uncomfortably close, but Hux’s seeking gaze discerns that it is nothing but an accidental hit. Somehow, this is worse than knowing that they are being actively sought out. At least then, he’d have a whisper of an excuse if one of these bolts, meant to destroy ships more resilient than any human body, hit him or Ren. 

But he has no excuse. None. He is caught in the crossfire, nothing more than collateral.

And perhaps that is how the First Order—Snoke, more precisely—thinks of him. A puppet. A lifeless—because he will matter no more or less than now when he’s dead—man held up on strings, tied in the Supreme Leader’s spindly fingers. He’s done his best, all his life, to make sure he cannot be replaced, but it has become increasingly apparent in recent months that he can never be truly certain of this. 

He wonders if Ren can hear his thoughts, as the knight seems to be able to so often, in this state. He finds that he might not be so bothered if Ren is, in fact, aware of everything that’s running through Hux’s head at the moment. Not that it  _ wouldn’t _ be an invasion of privacy, but that concerns him less than the concept of Ren recognizing his thoughts as mutinous, and worse—acting on it to keep Hux from doing the same.

Well.

He might not  _ kill _ Ren, but they’re going to be alone in the ship for a while. 

They’ll have time to talk.

If Ren’s recent behavior, which Hux has taken personal note of but conveniently neglected to mention to Snoke, is any indication at all, he might just listen to what Hux has to say. After all, as much as they hate each other, the only thing they unequivocally hate more might just be Snoke himself.

White envelops the two of them as they reach Hux’s shuttle only moments later, the ground beginning to crumble, the abyss they left behind no doubt growing with every passing second.

And then snow turns to ash turns to fire turns to laser bolts and debris and thin air and finally,  _ finally _ , a multiplied force of gravity that feels eerily akin to the way the capital-F Force did, on the few occasions that Hux was unfortunate enough to experience being on the wrong end of a powerful wielder of the thing. Hux’s back presses against the pilot’s seat for a few gut-wrenching seconds, and every muscle in his body strains to pull forward, and then he’s thrown violently forward as the ship lurches through the last broken bits of atmosphere and into space, and he’s glad for the seat belt. 

Ren, somewhere behind him, is undoubtedly less lucky, but at least Hux had the foresight to strap him in too, he thinks as a  _ thump _ comes from the hold.

Hux can’t help that he turns the ship such so that he can see Starkiller Base as it explodes, or maybe implodes, maybe a little bit of both but Hux can’t remember the difference right now, and it’s a ball of red fire, everything he’s worked towards for years.

There’s a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach, something bitter on his tongue, as the shuttle speeds away just fast enough to outrun the reaching, swirling agony of the dying base. He could back up the ship now, turn around, or just stop it. Ren would die. He would too. They could avoid the fallout that is coming now, whether they both live or Hux is the only one to make it out.

But nobody is chasing them, and Hux has set his course to a place as safe as he can get, so he puts the ship in autopilot and looks back, one last time, at the distant ruins of Starkiller Base as they shrink to nothing more than a pinprick of unnatural light in the vastness of space all around him.

When he turns to the hold, he startles. Not because of the blood soaking into the seats, visible even against the dark cushions, but because of the black eyes staring back at him under heavy lids, eyelashes laced with blood crystallized by ice.

“You’re awake,” he says, folding his hands behind his back. While he left the sniper rifle behind, there is a dagger strapped against the small of his back, just beneath his index finger, the blade expertly crafted to be as painful as possible, to draw as much blood as it can, and it is coated in a wicked venom. Ren knows it’s there, he knows the knight does, but he wants the sense of false security that blade gives him nonetheless.

“Yes,” Ren replies, voice heavier even than his eyelids, than his limp body when Hux dragged him through the snow. The greatcoat is crumpled around his shoulders still, and Hux finds that he doesn’t care about the loss as much as he’d thought he would.

“We don’t have much time. There’s a great deal you and I need to talk about.”

“I know,” is all Ren says. He still hasn’t broken eye contact with Hux.

In the distance, Starkiller Base—or what remains of it—is no longer visible.


End file.
